12 hours later, I am finally home. Flying to Hawaii from Oklahoma is no joke. I now know how spoiled we were, being able to get to Hawaii in 6 hours from CA.

Anyway, it was a long, long 10 days in Hawaii. Thankfully I had a wonderful room at the Hilton Hawaiian Beach Resort and Spa in Waikiki. It was my refuge from the 16 hour work days. My feet will never be the same, I am sure of it. I had 1.5 days off, which I used exploring the island and hanging on the beach. I was also able to meet some of my internet friends from TheKnot.com's Hawaii Brides Board. These are the ladies I connected with when I was planning our wedding in Hawaii and we've just kept in touch via email, Facebook and The Knot over the past two years. I finally met them in person over some yummy local grinds (food) at the Side Street Inn:

That was the most fun I had all week. The food was delicious and the company was even better!

Let's see, I won't get into the nitty-gritty...the first part of the week was spent in Board Meetings and then an all day festival for girls aged 25 and under. The rest of the week, I was the backstage manager for the quartet and chorus contests. That was all well and good, except that I soon discovered that I am very allergic to the fire retardant chemical that was on the stage curtains and I broke out in a nasty rash all over my body. Good times. And then, in my exhaustion, I left my carry-on behind in the rental car along with my house/car keys, camera and eye glasses. Thankfully, my colleague found it and it will make it's way back to Tulsa later this week. I did have to take a cab home from the airport because J was at work when I arrived. Later, he took me back to the airport to get my car out of long term parking. WHEW!

To recap:

Average number of hours worked each day: 12

Average number of daily shoe changes to help my aching feet: 3

Number of hives on the parts of my body that came in contact with the stage curtains: hundreds

Number of tubes of Benadryl cream: 3

Number of bags left behind: 1

Missing a once-in-a-lifetime history-making election: PRICELESS.

I voted absentee, but I was basically in a convention vacuum and missed all of election day! I got text message updates from J and during my dinner break was able to see snippets of the McCain's concession speech. But that was about it. I tried to catch up on the action later that night, as much as possibe on CNN, but with an 8 hour difference between Hawaii and the East Coast, I feel like I missed the whole thing. That's pretty sad.

I wrote to our OK Senator and former Congressman, Tom Coburn, and requested tickets to the Obama-Biden Inauguration in Washington D.C. Hey! It never hurts to ask, right? Apparently, the only legitimate way to get tickets is from your state respresntative. I mentioned our being an interracial couple and that J is bi-racial. I also mentioned that I had sung with his opera singer daughter, Sarah Coburn, at the Metropolitan Opera competition back in 2001. Who knows, we might get the tix! He's a Republican anyway, so I am sure he'd be happy to give them away, right!?

More pics of my week in Waikiki to come, once I get my camera back. I never thought I'd be anxious to leave Hawaii, but I must say, it's good to be home.

UPDATE: Here are some pics from my 10 days in Honolulu:

On the balcony of my suite in the Rainbow Tower overlooking Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head in the distance